Standon

St Mary is thought to replace a much earlier Saxon church to which the present 13th century chancel was added. The nave and aisles are fine examples of the Decorated period of the late 14th century with tall arches, a clerestory above and a magnificent window above the west door. The church, along with 140 acres of land was bequeathed in 1199 to the Knights of St. John, whose hospice still stands close by and was still the church school until 1974. The Knights remained in possession of the church until the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century.

The church is built of uncut flints, originally arranged in a chessboard pattern, but altered when the church was restored in 1864 and re-arranged without any pattern. The tower did not then join the church; a square plot of grass bounded by two walls being between the church and the tower, until this was filled in and used as an organ chamber for an organ installed in 1865. The older organ and the singers’ gallery above the west door were then cleared away. A new organ was built in 2000, occupying a position in the South aisle.

On entering the church one is immediately struck by the height of the chancel, there being a gentle slope the whole way up from the west end to the sanctuary, which is thirteen steps above the level of the nave . This construction is most unusual and occurs only in churches built by the Knights of St. John. They are called "processional" churches.

The chancel arch is Early English with fine dog-tooth moulding ornamentation. The Devonshire marble pillars however were erected at the time of the major restoration in 1864. At that date the lancet windows were inserted in the north and south walls of the chancel and a fine 15^th century east window was replaced by the present window of three lights in the Early English style. On each side of the chancel arch are openings, or hagioscopes, which at one time went down to the floor of the chancel. The stone staircase to the right of the chancel arch and the opening above leading to the rood loft, remain. Of the rood loft itself no traces are left.

In the wall of the south aisle, where formerly was the Lady Chapel, is a stone coffin under a floriated arch. This is thought to have belonged to an earlier church. The font is much restored but parts of it are of the 12th century.

There are several interesting monuments. In the north aisle stands the altar tomb of John Field, an Alderman of London, who died in 1477. The brasses on this tomb show Alderman Field in a long, loose robe, with the Squire, his son, alongside him in an elaborate suit of armour. At the foot of the tomb are the three children of the Alderman and his four grand-children.

On the south side of the chancel is an impressive monument to Sir Ralph Sadleir, who died in 1587. The 80 years of his life were eventful ones. He entered the service of Henry VIII as a young man and became a gentleman of the Privy Council. He was three times sent on an embassy to James V of Scotland and on the last of these occasions was commissioned to negotiate a marriage between Prince Edward and the newly-born Princess Mary, the future Queen of Scots. In this he was unsuccessful. Six years later he was in Scotland again as Treasurer to the Army and returned from the battle of Pinkie with the Scottish banner, the pole, of which still stands in the chancel. The immensely strong chest, which stands in the nave near the Field tomb almost certainly carried the coin, with which the English army was paid.

Sir Ralph later became keeper to Mary, Queen of Scots and was finally, the year before he died, one of the knights of the Privy Council at her trial and execution at Fotheringay. His house, Standon Lordship, was built in 1546, though it would seem that he must have spent little time there. A fine monument in Italian marble to his son, Thomas, stands on the opposite side of the chancel. His life seems to have been less eventful, though in 1603 he entertained James I and his Scottish retinue for two nights at the Lordship on their way to London for the King's coronation.

On leaving the church, the steep climb up the churchyard rewards one with a fine view over the village and surrounding country.

ST MARY. Unique in the county in two features: the large W porch and the detached tower to the s of the E end of the aisle. The church stands on rising ground, the E parts higher than the W end. Hence the chancel is raised by a number of steps, the most impressive effect inside. The chancel is early C13, as proved by two N lancet windows and the spectacular chancel arch with three orders of big polished shafts (renewed in G. Godwin’s restoration of 1865 in pink marble) with shaft-rings and stiff-leaf capitals, and an arch with dog-tooth ornament (cf. Eastwick). When, in the mid C19, the nave was rebuilt much wider than before, side openings were cut into the W wall of the chancel to allow a freer sight of the altar. Of mid C14 work the following survives: the W doorway, the four-light Dec W window with flowing tracery, the aisle windows, especially those to the W and E, and the ogee-headed recess in the S aisle. The arcade piers are assigned to the same date, but seem later. It is a big church. The arcades have five bays. They are tall and have piers with an uncommon section (four attached semi-octagonal shafts and in the diagonals a keel between two hollows; cf. Tring) and two-centred arches. Above a (later) clerestory (with the windows above the spandrels, not the apexes of the arches). Of the C15 the tower in its present form and the big deep W porch with two windows on each side. - FONT. A very interesting early C13 design; octagonal, with two horizontal wavy bands of stylized leaves running around the bowl. - MONUMENTS. In the chancel Brass to a kneeling Knight, lower part only, 1412. - At the end of the nave Brasses to a civilian, mid C15; to a Knight of the Wade family d. 1557. - In the N aisle plain tombchest, originally with brass-shields against the sides. On the lid the exquisite brasses said to be to John Field d. 1474, a merchant of the ‘Stapull of Caleys’, and his son John Field, Squire, represented by the side of his father and in the same size (2 ft 9 in). The son is in armour. Both stand on hillocks with pretty flowers. Below the small figures of some children. The elder John Field had been rich enough to lend Henry VI £2,000 for the defence of Calais. - In the chancel standing wall monuments to Sir Ralph Sadleir d. 1587 and Sir Thomas Sadleir d. 1606. Both are monuments with recumbent effigies (Sir Ralph alone, Sir Thomas behind and a little above his wife) under arches (Sir Ralph’s shallow and decorated with fleurons, Sir Thomas’s deeper and coffered) and flanked by columns. In the spandrels of Sir Ralph’s are Victories, in those of Sir Thomas’s thin scrolls. The back walls have big bold cartouches, Sir Ralph’s also excellent ribbon Work. The tops are achievements; Sir Ralph’s has also two obelisks at the angles. Both works come obviously from leading London workshops. By the side of Sir Ralph’s monument his helmets (C16), sword (C14), spurs, and standard pole.

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Standon. Every day the flying man flies over it, but never again will its people look at him with such amaze as came to them one autumn day in 1784, when there arrived at Standon the first human traveller from the English skies. A stone has been set up at Standon Green End, and on it we read of an event recorded as a "wondrous enterprise successfully achieved by the powers of chemistry and the fortitude of man."

It must have seemed a fearful thing to these villagers who were looking up on that September afternoon at a great spherical object floating through the sky, slowly descending until it touched the ground in a field near by, and a voice cried out calling on the people to secure the monster. Out of it, from the car suspended beneath the great silk ball, stepped a man and a dog. The man was Vincenza Lunardi, a young Italian who had made a balloon fitted with racket-shaped wings and oars which he declared would help to control it. He had started at Moorfields, 30 miles away, on the grounds of the Honourable Artillery Company, and had been just over two hours in the air. Three living creatures had entered the car at Moorfields, Lunardi, his dog, and a cat, but, falling very low as he came to North Mimms, Lunardi had astonished a country woman walking there, and had handed her his cat for safe keeping before he rose again and came on to Standon, so completing the first successful balloon flight ever known.

This was the village’s great event; its great man lies in his tomb in the medieval church, close by the timbered school which has stood for centuries. The plan of the church is unusual, for in the 15^th century a porch was added at the west end and a detached tower built beside the chancel, to which it has since been linked by an organ chamber. By this porch we come into a scene of singular beauty.

The lofty nave, with aisles, doorways, and windows 600 years old, slopes a little upwards, and eight steps mount to the 13th-century chancel, five more reaching the altar. The 700-year-old chancel arch is rich with carving, and has on each side of it a peep-hole through which the altar can be seen. Through the arch as we come in we see three lancets shining over the altar. The tomb we see high up in the chancel is that of as honourable a man as ever served our Tudor kings and queens, Sir Ralph Sadler. Here he is in stone, his seven children carved round his tomb and his armour hanging over it, with his stirrups and spurs. Resting at the tomb is a pole more thrilling than it looks, for from it waved the Royal Standard of Scotland at the Battle of Pinkie. It is over and forgotten, but in 1547 there was a plan to unite the English and the Scots by marrying Edward VI and Mary Queen of Scots. The scheme came to nothing, for the Scots were hostile and war resulted, when 16,000 Englishmen met 23,000 Scots at Pinkie, killing 6000 and routing the rest. Sir Ralph Sadler, who had spent an unhappy time in Edinburgh watching over Mary, brought back with him from the battlefield this mast of Scotland’s flag. Facing his tomb is that of his son Thomas, here in stone with his wife and their two children. We may see part of their old home (Lordship Manor) half a mile away by the river, incorporated into a house of a later day. The date 1546 on one of the stones, with Sir Ralph’s initials, show that he built it a year before the Battle of Pinkie, and it would be to this house that he brought back the standard pole.

Though the outside of the church has received a new stone face, inside everything, so far as the structure is concerned, is much as it was when the Calais merchant john Field was laid here in 1474. His brass portrait is on the top of his altar tomb with that of his son john, each with his children pictured below. There is a merchant’s mark on one of the four shields at the corners. Below the chancel steps are other brass portraits of a man of the 15th century and a soldier named Wade of the 16th, but someone has stolen the portrait of William Coffyn, Master of the Horse to Henry VIII’s third queen. The font has a fine 13th-century bowl.

The village was the home of one of the soldier poets who gave his life for us in the Great War, Robert Ernest Vernede. He was a scholar at St Paul’s School and St John’s at Oxford, and became a writer of novels and sketches and poems. He went out to France in the first few months of the war, when he was 40, was wounded soon after, and went back again. He had a fervent love of England. In one of his poems he asks the sleepers in France who will bring them fame in the coming years, and one of the last of all the poems he wrote was this noble prayer for his country:

All that a man might ask thou has given me, England,

Birthright and happy childhood’s long heartsease,

And love whose range is deep beyond all sounding,

And wider than all seas:

A heart to front the world and find God in it,

Eyes blind enow but not too blind to see

The lovely things behind the dross and darkness.

And lovelier things to be;

And friends whose loyalty time nor death shall weaken,

And quenchless hope and laughter’s golden store

All that a man might ask thou hast given me, England,

Yet grant thou one thing more:

That now when envious foes would spoil thy splendour,

Unversed in arms, a dreamer such as I

May in thy ranks be deemed not all unworthy,

England, for thee to die.

Much Hadham

St Andrew is perhaps everyone's idea of what an East Anglian church should be - a fine tower and spire, flint walls with battlements, and inside, heavy oak doors, massive roof timbers and intricate carving on the furnishings. All such details are well worth a look; they were well designed, and they are little altered handiwork of their age. The more you look, the more obvious it becomes that this is a complicated building; bits and pieces have been added for 750 years, making up a whole which is still developing.

In general, Much Hadham’s is typical of the Hertfordshire churches - it has, for instance, a "Hertfordshire spike", the lead-covered spire built on the top of the tower. But it is unusually large, 121 ft long, with a nave and two big aisles, which makes it seem more like a town church (such as Bishop’s Stortford, Ware or Hitchin) than a village one. The explanation is that the land around belonged to the Bishops of London, they built one of their official residences here and wanted a grander church.

The church was vandalised by Hertfordshire’s own Dowsing, John Skingle, during the Commonwealth when it lost most of its glass.

Unusually most of my favourite bits are modern (obviously not all):

The west window of the Tree of Life, dedicated in 1995, marks 10 years of the St Andrew and Holy Cross (Catholic) congregations sharing this church. Designed in 1979 by Henry Moore for an east window in the new church the Roman Catholics then planned. This stained-glass interpretation was made by Patrick and John Reyntiens

The Arts and Crafts steel light fittings in the nave, made to an excellent design by Sir Albert Richardson, which were given in memory of Lady Florence Norman of Moor Place in 1936.

The heads of a king and queen (1953) by Henry Moore, who lived in the parish from 1947 until 1986, inserted as label stops beside the west door of the tower; east of the chancel the cross to Frederick Norman (died 1916) with a Crucifixion figure by Henry Wilson, President of the Arts and Crafts Society who also designed the war memorial in the village.

ST ANDREW. Quite a large church, all embattled, and one of complicated history. A C12 church can be surmised but has left no visible traces. About 1220 the chancel was re-built (blocked N lancet window). About the middle of the century a S aisle was added to an older nave, three bays long, with octagonal piers, plain moulded capitals, and double-chamfered arches. As building went on to the W taste changed and the last bays have slightly more complex capitals and arches. The N aisle is of two dates. Its E bay, wider than the others and probably originally opening into a Norman transept, is late C13, the other bays are early C14 (see the capitals of the octagonal piers, and the arch mouldings). The arches are sparsely studded with fleurons. Amongst the S aisle windows one original one is in the Dec style. The same style appears in the S aisle Piscina. The W tower followed under the aegis of Bishop Braybrooke of London (1382-1404). It is of three stages, embattled and has a tall spike. The buttresses are diagonal, the W window is tall. The tower arch has an interesting moulding. The C15 added the S porch, inserted the big five-light E window with panel tracery in two tiers and several other windows, and put in new roofs. They all survive and are worth study. The nave wallposts rest on figures, the nave and chancel tie-beams are a little decorated on their undersides, the nave braces carry tracery, etc. - SCREEN. C15 with ‘panel’ tracery. - CHANCEL STALLS. With panelled back walls and poppyheads. - DOOR to N vestry. With big C13 ironwork. - CHAIRS. Two big chairs of c. 1400; of uncommon interest. - PAINTING. On the N wall remains of ornamental Early Tudor wall painting. - TILES. A few C14 tiles inside the N chancel recess. - STAINED GLASS. In the head of the E window, unfortunately too high to be seen properly, two figures of male saints and a row of female saints, C15, apparently well preserved. - E window by Burlison & Grylls, c. 1875-80. - S aisle last window from W designed by Selwyn Image and executed 1891. - PLATE. Two Chalices and a small Paten of 1576; Paten of 1811. - MONUMENTS. Brass with demi-figure of a man, C15 (chancel floor). - Brasses to a man and woman, c. 1500; to Clement Newce d.1519, wife and children; and to William Newce d. 1610, wife and children (nave E end). - Epitaph to Judith Aylmer d. 1618, wife of the Bishop of London, with the usual kneeling figure. - Joane Goldsmith d. 1569 (nave E end). - Dionis Burton d. 1616 (next to the Goldsmith brass). 

Much Hadham. Just where the River Ash bends round Bush Hill is a farmhouse of such dignity that we should guess it had a history; and so it has. It is the Palace, the country home of the Bishops of London for 800 years, and here began our Tudor dynasty,for Henry V’s widow (Shakespeare’s Katharine) gave birth in this farmhouse to Edmund Tudor, whose son Harry won the throne on Bosworth Field. The building has changed since then. Today it is mainly 16th century, with an outer casing of 17th-century brick and later wings. A floor cuts in half the fine old hall with its gabled windows and mighty oak girders, but there is an elegant staircase, and 17th-century panelling.

Giant survivors from the bishop’s avenue of trees lead to the road, and another avenue of mighty limes leads to the ancient yew, sturdy sentinel by the spacious church, which has been growing since the 12th century. Nothing is here of the Normans, and it is 13th century masons who have left their mark; we see it on almost every chalk stone at the end of the south arcade as clearly as if it had been scratched yesterday. The chancel was rebuilt about 1 220. The north aisle with its grand arcade was added about 1300, and at the end of that century Bishop Braybrooke built the massive tower and set his arms over the door.

Bearing up the 600-year-old roof of the nave are stone carvings of a sceptred king, a recumbent knight, a lady with a distaff, and the four Evangelists. The capitals and arches of the superb north arcade are rich in carvings of flowers and heads of lions and of men. The 15th century added carvings in wood to that in stone. The lions in the roof, the rood screen of elaborate tracery, the choir stalls with their misericords, the chancel panelling and some panels in the pulpit, two high-backed chairs, and some of the nave seats, are all of that time. The altar table is Elizabethan. Round the 15th century Easter Sepulchre are patterned tiles 600 years old, and the old vestry door has ornamental ironwork a century older. Some glass in the east window has wonderfully survived 500 years; it shows Peter and Andrew with a row of saintly women.

A wife of one of the bishops, Judith Aylmer of 1618, is here in stone, but without her head. Among the portraits in brass are a serjeant-at-law who died about 1420, an Elizabethan mercer called Clement Newce with his wife and 17 children, and William Newce (who died in 1612) with his two wives and 13 children. One brass tells us of Simon Flambard who heard the news of Bannockburn when he was parson here, and another asks us in French to pray for the soul of a later 14th-century parson. A more famous rector was Alexander Nowell, the Dean of St Pauls who wrote the Catechism. Elizabeth I thought highly of his learning, but that did not prevent her rating him soundly for presenting to her a prayer book with pictures of saints and martyrs, and once when he was preaching she called out "To your text, Mr Dean. Leave that; we have heard enough of that," so disconcerting the poor man that he was unable to finish his sermon.

The rectory is a little later than his day, a Jacobean house of brick-and-plastered timber. Several other old houses with over-hanging storeys give great charm to the village, and there is an inn with a secret passage behind its panelling.

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